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by thih9
689 days ago
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The timeline looks scary, it looks like it took about a decade to introduce a regulation that would help protect the vultures (and humans). > By the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population had plummeted to near zero (...) Since the 2006 ban on veterinary use of diclofenac, the decline has slowed in some areas, but at least three species have suffered long-term losses of 91-98% (...) Wikipedia claims that before this, a vulture species "was thought to be the most abundant large bird of prey in the world"[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-rumped_vulture |
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To be fair, the cause was conclusively identified as diclofenac only as late as 2004-2005. Even in papers published as late as 2003, various other, more likely culprits were being investigated, including pesticides, pathogens, or food scarcity. India moved to ban veterinary use of diclofenac by early 2005, slowed down by pushback from the Ministry of Agriculture for lack of an effective alternative vulture safe drug, which were only really demonstrated in studies in early 2006. Later that year diclofenac was banned.